How He Wished It Was All A Dream
by Alibi Nonsense
Summary: Kankuro has just added Sasori to his arsenal. Too bad Sasori is still alive.


When Sasori woke up, it was to darkness.

_'Damn it,'_ he thought. _'Ocular connections have gone again.'_

He tried to reach his eyes, but his hand wouldn't move.

_'Oh fuck.'_

"Deidara!" he tried to shout, but his voice petered out before it could exit his mouth. He tried to move his other limbs, but none would work: he tried crossing his eyes, but neither would obey. He was well and truly stuck.

_'Deidara…you worthless piece of crap. Did you leave me here to get trampled on, or are you just too stupid to notice when your partner collapses and stops moving?'_

He snarled (inside his head, of course) and tried to twitch (maybe surprising his body into a reaction would work?) but nothing. All around him was empty darkness.

_'Maybe my chakra network is down?'_ he thought. He tried to flood his body with chakra, but it seemed he had none of that for the moment, in his terrible prison. He was immobile. Vulnerable.

He strained his ears, trying to hear a sound in the silence, but it was useless. He would go mad if this kept up any longer… No noise, no sight, none of the other senses, of course, because he had deemed them unnecessary, but… damn him! They would be _brilliant_ right about now.

_'Worthless, my arse.'_

He grit his teeth (again, in his head) and tried to relax his muscles enough to open his mouth through gravity, but then he realised his mouth operated on a spring system precisely to stop that from happening and, anyway, he had no muscles to relax.

It was so _frustrating_! Didn't his captors realise he was _Sasori of the Red Sand_? That they were worthless before him? That bowing down on their knees not quickly enough would be the _least_ of their worries? But then he checked himself and frowned (his head, again) because they'd captured him easily enough, hadn't they?

What had he been doing beforehand? What had he been…

Pink. Granny Chiyo. A girl. His grandmother. Defeated by…

Oh _fuck_; they'd _laugh_ at him! They'd mock him!

Defeated by a granny and a girl in a little, pink dress!

With pink hair.

And probably ringlets, if Murphy's Law was anything to go by.

Oh _fuck_. Granny had beaten him (again). Damn the woman!

And when he woke up, Pinky was getting maimed so badly she'd have mutant offspring! Burns should do it. On the scalp. Burn off all that pretty pink hair and rub her eyes out with vinegar. Oh yes; she'd get it good.

When he could move again.

Wherever he was, it was a success as a prison.

Unless…

It wasn't a prison at all…

Unless…

_'Deidara…if you actually did leave me there to die and I did, I will skin you alive. I am meant to be eternal! Eternal, damn it! I never even hit forty! Eternity is not thirty-five measly years, you nitwit! Eternity is not even one hundred and that! Eternity is beautiful! Eternity is forever! Not less than forty fucking years! Bugger it!_

'_Damn you! I am going to skin you like a cat, Deidara! I am going to remove your entrails strand by precious strand: I am going to suck them up like noodles, Deidara and then chew them up and spit them out and then trample on them! Damn it, you worthless bugger!_

'_I am going to pluck out your eyes and skewer them on your own fingernails! I am going to extract all one hundred and twelve of your teeth with pliers, damn you! Then force them one by one into your navel until your skin breaks and they fall into your stomach! And then I'm going to carry on posting them into your stomach and then make you fish them out of your stomach with your fingers! Every last one of them, Deidara! Do you hear me? Every last one! Maybe then you'll have proper respect for the meaning of eternity, huh? Maybe then you'll realise eternity is _not_ what I received, huh?'_

Deidara was going to get it in the neck; oh yes.

'_Wait till leader gets wind of the fact you let Akatsuki's only spymaster die in a cave. Wait till he knows. Wait till he knows. Then you'll be sorry…'_

It was at this point Sasori ran out of tirades. Stuck in a nothingness, it was little wonder he had run out: he had no inspiration, nothing he could see beyond his own nose… and even that might have been his mind trying to be optimistic. In fact, he knew it was. His mind was always stupidly optimistic. Right now, he could even feel himself rushing up through the darkness, about to collide with something that looked like the back of a piece of paper and he knew it couldn't be that, because he wasn't even kept…inside…a scroll…

Wait… paper? A scroll? His wooden skin started getting curiously warm as he breached the paper seal. His heart (what was left of it anyway, inside the little flesh box) was beating like some type of mad croaking frog and he suddenly felt his limbs moving against his will as he catapulted into the wonderful sphere of light…

"What the fuck…?" he whispered. Then he realised that it had actually come out of his mouth. He looked around himself. His vision had come back: he could feel his chakra pouring back into his limbs like someone had opened a floodgate, and…he could _hear sounds_! Oh, kami! What a relief. Still no smell or touch or taste, though. But oh, kami, it was good! Beautiful, even. Despite the fact the floorboards he was practically kissing were uneven and covered in sawdust and had nails rusted into their ends; despite the fact he was probably in one heck of a fire, right now, it was damn good to be out of that frying pan.

He gave a happy little sigh and flopped over onto his back to appreciate the ceiling. This, as he soon found out, caused rather a jolt to the system. For one, thing, it had eyes, nose and a mouth… and cat ears. For another, it sure as hell could scream.

Sasori's eyes widened and he shrieked.

/

Kankuro almost had a heart attack. Sasori of the Red Sands was very much alive and kicking. Sasori of the Red Sands was very much alive and kicking in his bedroom. Sasori of the Red Sands was very much alive and kicking in his bedroom, and not only that but joining in his screams.

Kankuro's screaming petered off into scrambled breathing as he tried to calm his all but liquefied nerves and he watched as Sasori's did too… although, unlike his, when Sasori realised he was breathing, he ceased to altogether… which was kinda creepy to watch and more than creepy to listen to.

Kankuro took a deep breath.

"Right," he started, and then stopped, as his resolve crumpled.

Sasori, looking nervous, and still propped up by his elbow on the floor, waited for him to finish. Kankuro waited for Sasori to notice that he wasn't going to finish. Sasori didn't seem to want to notice this: in Kankuro's eyes, the expression on Sasori's face seemed to stubbornly deny the fact that Kankuro had ceased to try to speak and that it was Sasori's turn because Sasori, according to the expression on his face, didn't seem to want a turn. Sasori, according to the expression on his face, was very ready and willing to lose his turn in favour of Kankuro. Kankuro, according to Sasori's expression, could quite happily not talk as long as he liked, because Sasori, according to Sasori's expression, was quite happy to wait the entire day. Kankuro wished he wasn't so apt at reading expressions.

"I like puppets?" he said, having tried desperately to think of something less imbecilic to voice, but not coming up with the goods. It seemed Sasori was also having trouble.

The answer he got – confirming all his previous observation – was just as forced.

"Yes," said Sasori of the Red Sands.

"Do… do you like puppets?"

"I do. Yes."

"Um… yes."

"Yes."

The wait between words was excruciating.

"Do… do you like… making puppets?" said Kankuro to Sasori.

"Yes," said Sasori to Kankuro. "Do you like… making… puppets?"

"Er…" said Kankuro. The truth was, he found them rather awkward to assemble.

"Yes?" said Kankuro, hoping that, by the time Sasori _saw_ him making puppets, he would have acquired enough of a fervent love for the entire process to convince even Sasori. On the floor, Sasori was rapidly becoming a rabbit in the headlights as he realised it was _his_ turn to initiate the conversation.

"Ah…" he stuttered. Kankuro waited. He was stubbornly denying the fact that Sasori seemed to have run out of things to say.

"Ah…" mumbled Sasori. "Um… Do… do you like art?"

"Ah…" said Kankuro. "Do you like…art?"

"I…I…I…" said Sasori, "I like… eternal… art…"

"Yeah…" mumbled Kankuro. The conversation ground painfully to a halt. It was like trying to drive a steamroller without releasing the clutch.

On the floor, Sasori was rapidly scouting for an exit. Kankuro, suddenly, knew just the thing.

"Do you want sake?" he asked. This would help: everything became better with sake. Sake was glorious when it came to conversation starters: out of all beverages, sake was definitely the best. Sake was wonderful to free up a tongue; light as a bird. Libido too, if you wanted that sort of a freeing up – not that Kankuro did at the moment, but if the wine could loosen the conversation as fast as it had loosened his belt the _last _ time he'd drunk it, he'd be entirely ready to have some more.

On the floor, Sasori was freezing up.

"Sake?" he squeaked. "Sake… now?"

Kankuro paused. This was bad: was he about to refuse?

"You… you don't like sake?" he mumbled. Sasori looked pained.

"I…I…I'm a puppet…" he said. "I…I…I can't drink sake."

Kankuro's neurone transmitters came grinding to a messy halt.

"What?" he whispered.

"Uh…" said Sasori.

"But… it was… It was my only… idea… it…"

A crunching stop. This steamroller just would not move.

"Uh…" said Kankuro. "Do you like Disney movies?"

/

After five hours of Disney movies, back to back, in place of conversation, Sasori was ready to slit his own throat. His captor was eerily still beside him, like one move and he would be intruding on Sasori's personal space. It didn't help that that was actually what would happen. It didn't help that Sasori wasn't ready to intrude on his _captor's_ personal space _either_. It didn't help that the popcorn sitting between them neither of them would eat; Sasori because he couldn't swallow such a thing (he could incinerate it, with the flamethrower at the back of his mouth, but he couldn't do much else with it) and the boy sitting next to him because it looked like he didn't want to eat when somebody else wasn't eating.

It didn't help that both of them were of the same gender and, even if either of them had been gay, Sasori had put a mute on hormonal intrusion long ago.

It didn't help that, currently, Jiminy Cricket was first on his list to die. Pinocchio second. His late partner a respectable third.

Damn it. He wasn't even able to drink _tea_ let alone _sake_. Fuck immortality: he wanted his humanity back for a bit. And all the good bits of it.

He wanted to get drunk off his arse, have a decent fuck, go to sleep, wake up with no memory of the previous night, kill the spare in his bed and then bugger off back to sleep again. Was that too much to ask for one night? He didn't even have to have a _human_ fuck-buddy. Even a horse would do the job nicely. He'd settle for a poodle at this rate. Or a decent conversation.

He didn't even know his captor's name.

Wait.

Actually, yes he did.

"Are you… Kankuro?" he said, over the noise of _you got no strings to hold me down, to make me fret and to make me frown…_ The boy next to him started.

"I…I…I… What if I am?"

"I… I thought I poisoned you."

"You did."

"Right."

"Yeah."

"…"

"…"

"How… how are you standing?"

"…"

"…"

"Good medic. How are you standing?"

"Good medic, but not very good assassin."

"Oh."

"…"

"…"

"Terrible, isn't it?"

"…"

"The film, I mean."

"Uh…"

"…"

"Do you want me to turn it off?"

Sasori dragged a hand down his temples and wished he could sleep off the (imaginary) headache. He let his silence answer for him.

The television was switched off.

Sasori shrugged off a sandal, pulled a screwdriver over from the other side of the room and started tinkering with his foot. He felt Kankuro's eyes land on the joints of his little toe. He let him watch for a bit.

Finally, Kankuro said, "I'm going to bed."

"Right," said Sasori, replacing a spring.

"I'm going to turn the light off."

"Don't."

"Go somewhere else, then."

Sasori's head jolted upwards.

_"That was an __**option**__!?"_ he said, slamming the screwdriver down so hard into the floorboard that it cracked and standing. Kankuro's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he gulped.

"I think it was?" came the strangled reply.

Sasori gritted his teeth…

Lowered his head…

Counted to ten…

…and charged.

/

They found Kankuro, lying, in a heap of rubble, with a barrage of kunai embedded in the plaster of his former walls and fist marks on his face.

They blamed the 'bomb' on a faulty explosive tag.

They ignored the fist marks.

/

They found Sasori lying, in a heap of rubble, outside the walls of the Akatsuki base. He'd managed, somehow, to demolish the 'door'.

The Akatsuki liked using boulders as doors.

Deidara took one look at the rubble and Sasori and started crying and hitting him.

Kakuzu took one look at the rubble and Sasori and just started hitting him.

They ignored his broken fist: it was reasonable, considering the circumstances.


End file.
